the keeper of the butterflies
by irishais
Summary: There is always more than one version of a story. Yuna listens; the fayth dream.


_the keeper of the b.u.t.t.e.r.f.l.i.e.s._

_-irishais-_

_in the beginning, there was nothing, and the fayth lay sleeping._

_-The Book of Zaon, I.i._

—

She sits at the feet of a priest of Yevon, a wrinkled old man, shriveled up like a raisin in the Besaid sun. The temple is cool, a place of shadows and stone. It is a relief to be inside; even at dusk, the air is still thick and humid. Summer in Besaid has been like that for as long as she can remember, years since Kimahri had brought her here.

The priest coughs lightly, and sips water from a glass cup. Yuna knows that she should be patient; a Summoner's path is earned, not granted. Her father has told her that again and again, and she repeats it daily: _Be good._

"The tip of Mount Gagazet is bitterly cold," the priest begins without preamble, and Yuna snaps to attention. "And the battle that was waged upon it was terrible indeed.

"Yu Yevon had fought tooth and nail to keep machina-hungry Bevelle out of Zanarkand. Many died in his efforts, but the people of Zanarkand were loyal, if nothing else. The war raged for many months, decimating city after city in the quest to bring Yevon and his followers to their knees. Finally, they encroached upon the borders of Zanarkand, destroying anything that lay in their path."

Yuna shifts her weight against the cold stone floor. The story has been told to her a thousand times, a thousand ways, but there is always something off about a story where her home was the villain. She knows that the story changes with every perspective, that Zanarkand had been machina-run but reliant on Summoners and Bevelle fought an internal struggle of technology and the way of Yevon. Still.

_Behave_, she tells herself sternly.

"Finally, Yevon ordered his surviving citizens to retreat into the mountains, hoping that the wild, winding paths and the fierce elements would be above Bevelle's abilities, that they would retreat. But that was not to be, and Bevelle left behind them a trail of scattered bodies, slaughtered in their fierce desire to achieve total victory. They murdered indiscriminately, man, woman, the very old and the very young alike."

She shuddered at the image.

—

"To the peak!" Yevon cried, the wind whipping about him, battering so hard at points that he feared it would be the elements that did him in up here, rather than the massive army winding their way up the mountain right behind them. Everywhere, pyreflies winked and glittered, edging his vision with a multi-hued sparkle. He kept shouting, suppressing the sick need to count the number of pyreflies in this stretch of mountain alone.

_Forty_, some small part of his mind whispered (_it_ had clearly been keeping track), and he swallowed the information thickly. There would be time for grief later. For now, he grabbed the arm of a woman who stumbled right at his feet, a beautiful young girl with pale skin and a slash on her cheek. "Go!" he urged her. She nodded, stumbling away from him.

To say that he was not afraid would have been a lie, but pressed somewhere deep within his core, he felt the burning of his creation, and knew that even if he died here, he would have died trying _something_ to save his beloved city and its inhabitants.

He scrambled up the hill as the last of the stragglers made their way around the bend, hustling the small group into one of the winding passages through the mountain, counting hastily as they pressed on. Maybe a hundred, maybe more, maybe less.

He pushed to the front of the group. This had to work. If it failed...

Yevon did not want to think what would happen if he failed.

"Listen!" he commanded, clambering up the narrow, precarious steps that led to the peak, where he would save them. All of them. "Stay on the precipice when you emerge from here. I will block off the passage."

He let them push past him, picking out the sound of the soldiers' boots stamping in hard rhythm against the weather-worn stones of the passage as Yevon's people pushed and shoved.

It was time— it was now, or they were dead, and Zanarkand was lost forever. He reached into the well of power inside, and turned, flinging great nets of it to the survivors that stood on the peak of Gagazet.

The people of Zanarkand stood and watched in wonder as Yevon _changed_ them, calling dozens of pyreflies to the great piece of magic performed here. They watched as the world went muddy at the edges, as Yevon wrapped himself in an armor of pyreflies, becoming a great beast of a thing that launched from the precipice of Gagazet.

Bevelle's army stopped, staring at the ragged remains of Zanarkand and what they had become. Then Yevon descended upon them, and the first fayth were torn away from the battle.

When they awoke, they found themselves in a meadow, a glistening waterfall nearby.

It was the young girl, the pale one, cold emanating from her very being, that found the voice for what they all were thinking.

"We have dreamed this place," she said simply, and the fayth knew it to be true. The glistening city stretched out before them, impossibly perfect, a jewel upon a vast sea.

Yevon had disappeared.

—

With a start, she realizes that the priest is watching her mildly, and that her legs have gone numb from sitting. The story world that she has lost herself in drifts apart around her, and Yuna shifts, moving her legs in an effort to revive the circulation. She does her best to ignore the prickling sensation.

Her curiosity is yet unabated.

The priest smiles, gently, seeming to pluck the questions out of her mind before she can form them. "There is a spring near the ruins of that dream-Zanarkand, which has long fallen into ruin, that is claimed to be populated by dozens of the original fayth. It is said, though, that once the Eternal Calm is brought about by a worthy summoner, the city will be restored to its rightful glory." His voice is heavy with solemnity through the last line.

She bites her lip and nods. She is only twelve, but she understands.

The priest rises to his feet fluidly; Yuna feels like a bumbling child next to him. He places a hand on her head, smoothing her hair with a dry palm, and walks away, into one of the chambers. Yuna stays where she is, her legs feeling like they've been stabbed with a hundred needles, and looks at the statue of her father for a long time.

—

_and the Summoner plucked aeons from the heavens, casting them down upon the fiendish and unjust, to cleanse Sin from the land._

_-The Book of Zaon, _


End file.
